Great email copywriting goes beyond the actual email content.

It considers the email subject line, how you personalize said content, your call to action, and more.

To help you master it, I’ll discuss 12 foolproof email copywriting best practices that’ll sway your subscribers not just to open the email but to read it and take appropriate action. I’ll also mention a powerful email marketing tool you can use to level up your email copywriting efforts.

This Article Contains:

(Click on the links to jump to specific sections)

• 12 Email Copywriting Best Practices You Should Adopt Today
  • Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points and Preferences
  • Write a Short, Eye-Catching Email Subject Line
  • Ensure Your Email Copy Aligns with the Subject Line 
  • Personalize Your Email Copy for Maximum Engagement
  • Use Targeted Marketing to Create Relevant Emails
  • Talk about Benefits, Not Features
  • Develop a Unique Brand Voice and Use It Consistently
  • Speak Directly to Your Reader 
  • Keep Your Email Copy Short and Simple
  • Stick to a Single, Clear Call to Action
  • Leverage Consumer Psychology in Your Email Marketing Strategy
  • Make Split Testing Your Emails a Habit
• The Best Email Marketing Tool to Use in 2024

Let’s begin.

12 Email Copywriting Best Practices You Should Adopt Today

Email copywriting offers a fantastic way to:

• Build your brand awareness.
• Retain your existing customers.
• Boost your conversion rate and more.

However, your recipients have limited time and may hardly spend 10 seconds reading each email.

Don’t worry.
With compelling email copy, you can capture the readers’ attention, keep them engaged, and prompt action.

Just follow the email copywriting tips I’ve mentioned below to level up your email game today:

1. Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points and Preferences

Before writing your email copy, thoroughly research your target audience to identify their pain points and preferences.

This can help you decide what email content you should share with your audience.

For instance, let’s say you’re an e-commerce store selling golf equipment, and your audience is searching for beginner golf clubs. Your email can feature some great beginner clubs they can check out, or it can share a handy guide mentioning dos and don’ts for golf beginners.

But how can you do this research?
Sending surveys to your existing email list is an easy way to collect info about your target audience.

You can also use social media marketing to garner insights from people outside your email list.

Based on all the info gathered, create a buyer persona that your email copywriter can refer back to while crafting emails.

What’s a buyer persona?
A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience. It helps you create more targeted and relevant content for your readers.

2. Write a Short, Eye-Catching Email Subject Line

Your readers receive hundreds of emails every day and won’t have the time to read each email. That’s probably why almost 47% of people decide whether to open an email based solely on its subject line.

And since the subject line is the first thing to grab the reader’s attention, you need to get it right!

But how do you craft an eye-catching email subject line?
You can start by personalizing the email to include the recipient’s name.

A study reveals that emails with subject lines addressing the recipient by their first name or business name have an 18.30% open rate.

Another factor to consider is on what device your audience views their emails.

Since many of your subscribers probably use email on their mobile devices, keep your subject lines mobile-friendly — ideally between 25 and 35 characters.

You can take things a step further by mentioning a pain point in the subject line and alluding to how you address it in your email body copy.

To help you out, here are five subject line examples for inspiration:

• “Need help crafting your content marketing copy, [first name]?” 
• “[First name], your favorites are back in stock!” 
• “5 B2B email marketing tactics experts swear by”
• “BOGO from April 14-16 — grab them now!” 
• “[First name], your cart misses you.”

3. Ensure Your Email Copy Aligns with the Subject Line

Once you’ve caught the reader’s attention with your subject line, you need to keep them engaged with your email body.

But for that, your email body copy should align with your subject line.

What do I mean by that?
For example, let’s say your subject line promises to share the best time to send emails to subscribers.

Your email copy must provide that answer.

Mention the best time for getting high open rates in the body content or add a CTA redirecting to a blog post showing optimal times for sending emails.

Following this best practice helps you build and nurture trust among subscribers. They can trust that your brand won’t send emails with a disconnected subject line just to get them to open the email.

On the flip side, if your email body copy doesn’t deliver on what you promised in the subject line, your email can come across as clickbait.

That’s not all.
To make things worse, your readers may mark your emails as spam, hurting the email deliverability of your future email campaigns.

4. Personalize Your Email Copy for Maximum Engagement

If you want an email subscriber to engage with your email (like clicking on your CTA button), you need to personalize your email.

You can start by mentioning their name in the subject line of your email marketing campaign. Take it up a notch by crafting a body copy tailored to their preferences, interests, or purchase history.

For example, let’s say a customer recently purchased a personal care product like a shampoo or conditioner from your website.

You can send them a personalized email message suggesting related products like body wash. Alternatively, you send customized emails offering them discounts on the brands or products they’ve already purchased.

This way, your email copy is bound to capture the readers’ attention and improve conversions.

Go back to Contents

5. Use Targeted Marketing to Create Relevant Emails

Relevancy isn’t limited to your subject line.

Remember, once the reader opens your email based on the subject line, your email content should keep them reading.

For this, you can leverage targeted marketing.

What’s that?
Let’s say you have a group of people in your email list who have subscribed to your email newsletter but never purchased from your online store.

Within this group, assume you’ve got two subgroups:

• Group A: Those who have added products to their wishlist/cart.
• Group B: Those who haven’t added products to their wishlist/cart.

The email marketing approach you’ll use for each group will differ.

For instance, you can gently nudge people in Group A (with an active buying interest) by reminding them of items in their cart.

On the flip side, Group B, which only subscribed to your email newsletter, may not know everything your company offers. Here, you’d be better off talking about 2-3 relevant products or services in detail, with a clear CTA leading them to explore more about your offerings.

6. Talk about Benefits, Not Features

If your emails simply preach about all the features your product/service offers, it can come across as tasteless marketing, and it’s bound to turn off your reader.

Instead, shift your focus to the unique benefits you can offer customers — how you can add value to their lives.

For instance, if you’re writing marketing copy to sell tents, don’t focus on features like the materials used or peak height. Alternatively, describe how the tent is perfect for a trek across the mountains on a rainy day since it’s leak-proof and sturdy.

You can also highlight customer reviews showcasing how people benefit from your offerings.

My point?
Sharing your product’s benefits makes for a more compelling email copy than rambling about its features.

7. Develop a Unique Brand Voice and Use It Consistently

While drafting your email copy, it’s crucial to remember that a recipient doesn’t interact with you but with your brand.

That’s why you’ll need to develop a distinctive and consistent brand voice that can be used by your:

• Email copywriter.
• Email marketer.
• Social media marketing team.
• Digital marketing team, and others.

What’s a brand voice?
A brand voice is nothing but the personality your brand uses in its communications. It should help readers identify your brand even if they skipped reading your email address or even the subject line.

For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand in the personal care industry, your brand voice can be conversational and light-hearted.

But if you’re in the legal industry, your marketing emails will probably sound more professional.

Keeping your brand voice consistent throughout the email marketing campaign can foster a better customer experience and build brand loyalty.

8. Speak Directly to Your Reader

Every email you send is about your reader — not you.

That’s why it makes sense to use second-person pronouns such as “you,” “your,” and “yours” to address the target audience directly.

Using these pronouns is especially important in your welcome email since it can leave a lasting impression on the reader. This first impression is critical to building a long-term relationship with your subscribers.

Now there’s no magic number for how many second-person pronouns you should use.

But I recommend using such pronouns at least 10 times to ensure your copy is oriented toward the reader.

If you’re facing trouble writing emails this way, just imagine drafting an email to a friend or someone you know. This way, you can easily keep the language direct and focused on the reader.

Go back to Contents

9. Keep Your Email Copy Short and Simple

With email copywriting, less is more.

Don’t use hundreds of words if you can convey the same idea with a few dozen words.

Wondering why?
A two-line paragraph on your laptop can look like a regular-sized paragraph on a mobile device. Keeping your paragraphs short and simple ensures that your mobile readers get a good reading experience.

Another reason to keep the overall email body short is that people generally don’t read every line and word carefully.

They scan through the email marketing copy and pick out the most salient points.

Filling your email with lots of text makes this process harder for the reader and increases the likelihood of them ignoring or deleting your email.

Remember, your aim is to direct your readers to the CTA button or link, so best not waste their time narrating a story. I’d encourage you to stick to one thought per paragraph while writing emails to avoid overwhelming your readers.

10. Stick to a Single, Clear Call to Action

After the subject line, your call to action (CTA) is probably the most important part of the entire email campaign.

But you want to keep it simple and not include too many CTAs.

For example, you don’t want to have a CTA asking readers to click on a link redirecting to your landing page and another CTA to follow you on a social media handle in the same email.

Ideally, stick to a single CTA, like:

• Subscribe to our newsletter.
• Buy now!
• Follow us on Twitter.
• Explore more on our website.
• Add this item to your cart. 

These simple yet effective CTAs tell the reader exactly what the expected and desired action is from their end.

I’d also recommend keeping the CTA in a separate button rather than a link.

Why?
Since most readers scan through an email marketing copy, a CTA button will stand out among all that text, drawing their attention and increasing their chances of clicking on it.

11. Leverage Consumer Psychology in Your Email Marketing Strategy

While emailing a prospect, you can use psychology to influence consumers.

Here are three consumer psychology tactics you can use to your advantage in an email marketing campaign:

A) Power Words

Power words can evoke emotions in an email subscriber and prompt them to open your email and click on the CTA button.

For example, instead of just saying you have some new findings regarding your industry, use words like “surprising” or “incredible” alongside your findings to elicit an emotional response.

B) FOMO

Another tactic you can leverage is FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

This can take the form of a limited-time sale with a subject line saying, “Prices dropped for 24 hours only!” Such a subject line creates a sense of urgency and makes your readers feel they’ll miss out on a great deal if they don’t act now.

C) Social Proof

As an email marketer, you can use social proof like customer testimonials, case studies, and press mentions to establish legitimacy and trust around your brand.

You can leverage this best practice for new customers who might be on the fence about investing their money in your product/service.

12. Make Split Testing Your Emails a Habit

AB testing or split testing is when you create two slightly different versions of a good email and test them with your target audience to determine which version performs better.

For example, you can design two variants of the CTA button and see which leads to more clicks.

You can also test with different:

• Subject lines.
• Power words.
• Email marketing copy lengths.
• Colors and images.
• Social proof.
• Sending schedules, and more.

Constantly testing how your audience responds to different approaches is a great way to keep your copy fresh, innovative, and relevant to subscribers.

Moreover, changing small aspects of your email marketing copy as a response to feedback helps improve your customer experience.

Go back to Contents

Now that we’ve gone over some best practices to help you write the best email copy, I’ll mention a powerful tool you can use to make the most of your email copywriting efforts.

The Best Email Marketing Tool to Use in 2024: GMass

GMass is a robust email marketing automation tool that works entirely inside Gmail.

Its advanced capabilities make it a popular software solution among copywriters, sales professionals, small business owners, and even employees at social media giants like LinkedIn and Twitter.

With GMass, you can:

• Save any email as a template to reuse in future email campaigns.
• Automatically personalize bulk emails with subject lines, paragraphs, images, links, attachments, and more changes.
• Create customized workflows to send automated follow-up emails to a prospect or an existing customer.
• A/B test your emails to find the email copy that brings the best results.
• Track how each email performs using standard metrics like email open rate and click-through rate through detailed reports.
• Send behavior-based emails depending on how readers reacted to your previous emails – opened, clicked on CTA, sent directly to trash, etc.
• Overcome Gmail’s daily sending limits so you can reach your entire subscriber base in one go.
• Access advanced functionalities using the handy GMass add-on for the Android Gmail app.

To start using GMass, download the GMass Chrome extension and sign up for a free trial using your Gmail account.

Go back to Contents

Final Thoughts

Email copywriting might seem difficult at first, but it can help you build brand awareness, nurture incoming leads, and increase sales.

You can make the most out of every email campaign you create and deploy using each best practice I’ve outlined above.

For this, you can use the email marketing automation tool GMass. The tool lets you personalize your cold email campaigns at scale, automate follow-ups, analyze email performance, and do so much more.

Download the GMass Chrome extension today and take your email copywriting to a whole new level!

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

twitter.com/PartTimeSnob

Marketers and salespeople use newsletters, case studies, and other indirect marketing techniques to build brand awareness.

And while these digital marketing practices may capture a client’s interest, you can only drive sales conversions by prompting customer action.

But how exactly do you do that?
By leveraging direct response copywriting!

It helps you drive a prospect towards immediate action as soon as they’ve finished reading your marketing message.

In this article, I’ll list ten no-nonsense best practices to enhance your direct response copywriting outcomes. I’ll then share a fantastic email marketing automation tool to elevate your direct response copywriting process and convert more leads.

This Article Contains:

(Click on links below to jump to specific sections)

• What Is Direct Response Copywriting?
• 10 Best Practices for Successful Direct Response Copywriting
  • Define Your Direct Response Copywriting Goals
  • Understand Your Audience and Handle Their Pain Points
  • Craft an Eye-Catching and Impactful Subject Line
  • Create an Informative and Compelling Long Form Copy
  • Include an Irresistible CTA to Drive Conversion
  • Personalize Your Content Copy for the Reader
  • Use Simple Language to Make Your Copy Clear and Understandable
  • Edit Your Copy to Refine Grammar and Enhance Readability
  • Leverage Urgency to Trigger Action
  • A/B Test the Copy to Determine the Best Fit for Your Audience

• Boost Your Direct Response Copywriting Outcomes in 2022 with GMass

What Is Direct Response Copywriting?

Direct response copywriting is writing a marketing email or sales copy that gets an immediate response from your audience.

As a response, your reader may:

• Purchase your product.
• Go to your landing page.
• Download a case study, and so on.

This form of copywriting requires an in-depth understanding of your audience and uses a straightforward, personal approach.

It’s perfect for creating your ad copy, scientific advertising, and more.

Direct vs. Indirect Response Copywriting

Unlike direct response copywriting, indirect response copywriting doesn’t care about leveraging urgency or getting an immediate response.

Indirect response copywriting has one goal: stay on the prospect’s radar till they’re ready to buy.

That’s why the type of content you use in the indirect response marketing or sales copy should:

• Build brand awareness and credibility.
• Show how you’re different from the competition.
• Nurture prospects slowly and steadily.

Go back to Contents

Let’s now look at some actionable tips to refine your direct response copywriting process.

10 Best Practices for Successful Direct Response Copywriting

Here are ten best practices to help you improve at direct response copywriting:

1. Define Your Direct Response Copywriting Goals

Before drafting your direct response copy, have a clear goal in mind.

What do I mean by that?
Ask yourself what specific action you want the recipient to take after reading your email.

This could be something like:

• Signing up for your free software trial.
• Joining your webinar.
• Subscribing to your newsletter.
• Purchasing a product from your website.

The direct response copy must emphasize your priorities and effectively communicate them to your readers. Only then will they be able to act on it.

2. Understand Your Audience and Handle Their Pain Points

Celebrated copywriter, Eugene Schwartz, observed that the copywriter’s task is “not to create mass desire, but to channel and direct it.”

Simply put, your copy isn’t for everyone ⁠— it’s meant for your target audience.

And to carry out effective direct response copywriting for your target market, you’ll need a clear understanding of their goals, preferences, and pain points.

To gain insights about your potential customer, you can:

• Analyze your current customer data and look for qualities that define your ideal customer.
• Interact with your followers on social media. Observe how they engage with each other and take stock of their expectations.
• Gather data about your competitors and determine whom their content targets and why.

Once you understand your audience’s needs, you can tailor your direct response copy to address their pain points. Doing so proves that you genuinely care about helping them out and have viable solutions at hand.

3. Craft an Eye-Catching and Impactful Subject Line

The subject line is the gateway to your direct response body copy.

Most readers use it to decide whether to open your email message ⁠— 69% of recipients report an email as spam solely based on its subject line.

My point?
Make the subject line relevant, eye-catchy and compelling.

Specifically, ensure that your subject line:

• Intrigues your readers.
• Hints at your email’s big idea.
• Promises something exciting.
• Is concise and clear.

For example, here’s a direct marketing email subject line promising a solution to a pain point marketers face:

Want to discover some effective subject lines?
Read my articles on:

• 43 cold high-converting email subject lines you can use right away.
• Also, check out 20 follow-up email subject lines that boost your response rate.

4. Create an Informative and Compelling Long Form Copy

Many marketers avoid writing long form copy, thinking it’ll bore prospects.

However, an engaging and informative long form copy drives better traction and a higher conversion rate than short copy.

But how?
Unlike short copy, long form copy:

• Gives you room to add relevant statistics, history, FAQs, and social proof.
• Lets you reuse the same CTA in different places to trigger action.
• Convinces readers they’re making an informed choice, advancing them along your sales funnel.

For instance, the above direct response copy from Adobe is an excellent copywriting lesson on writing long form content.

Go back to Contents

5. Include an Irresistible CTA to Drive Conversion

After you’ve informed, educated, and convinced your target audience with your email body, you may need them to:

• Visit your landing page or sales page.
• Sign up for your newsletter.
• Request a product demo.
• Download a case study.
• Subscribe to your services, and so on.

But how do you prompt action?
Add a strong call to action (CTA) nudging readers to take immediate action.

The CTA is the climax of your direct response email.
It’s the springboard launching your customers towards taking immediate action.

For example, check out this strong call to action asking users to sign up for Spotify Premium:

As you can see, your CTA needs to be clear, concise, irresistible, and actionable ⁠— making it easy for readers to act without getting confused or overwhelmed.

6. Personalize Your Content Copy for the Reader

Receiving a generic direct mail will turn off your readers, causing them to lose interest.

Instead, your direct response copywriter should personalize the emails to make them look tailor-made to each recipient. Your direct mail must show the potential customer you genuinely care about solving their unique problems.

To personalize your copy, you can:

• Address your recipient in the subject line.
• Mention your reader’s name in the email body.
• Provide viable solutions to the prospect’s pain points.
• Feature content relevant to your reader’s location or demographic.
• Share a relevant social proof example, like a testimonial.
• Customize the direct response copy based on your reader’s niche or industry.

Here’s a great copy that’s personalized based on the customer’s location:

Go back to Contents

7. Use Simple Language to Make Your Copy Clear and Understandable

Since direct response copywriting focuses on getting an instantaneous response, keeping your emails simple and understandable is critical. The more understandable your copy is, the greater your chances of eliciting a response.

For instance, Coursera uses straightforward language in their direct marketing message shown below:

And here’s how you can create a copy that’s as easily understandable as Coursera’s:

• Avoid jargon or complicated language in your emails (even in scientific advertising).
• Keep explanations precise without harping on irrelevant details.
• Offer a clear and logical narrative that seamlessly moves from point to point.

8. Edit Your Copy to Refine Grammar and Enhance Readability

Overanalyzing your content while drafting the direct response copy can slow things down.

For effective direct response copywriting, draft your email content quickly — keeping in mind your copy goals and brand voice. Then, edit your email ad copy or sales letter ruthlessly.

Your direct response copywriter should focus on the copy’s:

• Flow of thought.
• Factual accuracy.
• Consistency of punctuation.
• Use of grammar.
• Sentence structures.
• Formatting, and more.

9. Leverage Urgency to Trigger Action

Remember, your direct response copy must encourage customers to act in response to your email content.

But even if you’ve got an irresistible subject line, a compelling email body, and a persuasive CTA, many prospects will still resist taking immediate action. That’s why you need to incentivize readers to act.

One excellent tactic you can use here is leveraging urgency. 

You can tell readers that:

• Your product is selling out fast.
• You’re running a special, limited-time campaign.
• You’re giving away free stuff to recipients who sign up today, or so on.

The idea is to subtly push readers to click on your CTA button before they might lose interest.

Hulu’s email below is an excellent direct response copywriting lesson.

This great copy instills a sense of urgency by asking readers to hurry up and claim their free Uber One membership before it expires.

10. A/B Test the Copy to Determine the Best Fit for Your Audience

If you’re a direct response copywriter hoping to inspire readers to take action, fine-tune your copy for optimal engagement and conversions.

But how?
Create different versions of your direct response email’s:

• Subject line.
• Body copy.
• CTA.
• Template, and more.

Then, test the success of each variation in securing your direct response marketing outcomes.

Testing helps you optimize your direct response copy and direct marketing strategy based on your target audience’s needs.

Split testing (A/B testing) different email components this way reveals exactly what your readers are looking for — the type of content that gets them to click on your CTA or ignore your email messages.

Go back to Contents

Now that we’ve covered some handy direct response copywriting tips, I’ll share an excellent tool to help you achieve your direct marketing goals.

Boost Your Direct Response Copywriting Outcomes in 2024 with GMass

GMass is an advanced email marketing automation platform you can use to create and send personalized direct response emails at scale.

Its easy-to-use features make GMass the ideal tool for digital marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, salespeople, SEO specialists, and small business owners. GMass is also a popular email marketing tool among employees at social media giants like LinkedIn and Twitter.

With GMass, you can:

• Automatically personalize your direct response emails at scale, including the recipient names, subject lines, paragraphs, images, and links.
• Schedule your direct response email marketing campaign to go out at optimal times, reaching readers when they’re most likely to respond.
• Analyze the performance of your direct response email campaign through detailed campaign reports.
• Create workflows to keep sending automated follow-ups till a prospect responds to your email message.
• Build an email list of prospective customers directly from your Gmail search results. 
• Run A/B tests to determine the type of content that drives maximum conversion.
• Save your emails as templates to reuse in future direct response marketing campaigns.

To access these outstanding features and more, download the GMass Chrome extension and sign up for free with your Gmail or Google Workspace account.

Go back to Contents

Wrapping Up

Direct response copywriting helps you trigger instantaneous customer action and improves your sales conversion chances.

The tips listed above can refine your direct response copywriting process and deliver better content marketing results.

But if you’d like to take your direct response copywriting game up a notch, use a powerful email marketing automation tool like GMass.

With GMass, you can automatically personalize your direct response emails at scale, schedule email marketing campaigns, track the response rate of your emails, automate follow-ups, and do so much more.

Download the free GMass Chrome extension to amp up your direct response email copywriting efforts today!

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

twitter.com/PartTimeSnob

Interested in a crash course on cold email copywriting?

There’s much more to effective email copywriting than just writing an on-brand email copy. You’ll also need to personalize your email copy based on the recipients’ interests and AB test it for optimal engagement.

In this guide, I’ll cover what email copywriting is, including the three key components of an email copy. I’ll then share nine practical tips to help improve your email copywriting skills.

As a bonus, I’ll mention a powerful tool you can use for email marketing at scale.

This Article Contains:

(Click on links to jump to specific sections)

• What Is Email Copywriting?
• 9 No-Nonsense Tips to Help You Excel at Email Copywriting
• Level Up Your Email Copywriting Results in 2022 with GMass

Let’s go!

What Is Email Copywriting?

Email copywriting is the process of writing an email copy for an existing or a potential customer to convert them.

However, conversion in this context isn’t limited to closing a sale.

It can also be about getting a response to your email, a sign up for your newsletter, a download for your ebook — essentially, any goal you’re trying to achieve with the email message.

Before we dive into how you can master email copywriting, let’s look at the main components of an email copy.

3 Key Components of an Effective Email Copy

All effective email copies share three key components:

• Subject line: it’s your first touchpoint with the recipient and heavily influences your email open rate. Research shows that 47% of recipients open emails based on just the subject line. We’ve written an entire guide on writing cold email subject lines if you want a very deep dive.
• Email body: your email body is the bulk of your message. It can tell a story, share details about your product or service, showcase social proof, or provide valuable information.
• Call to action: it tells your reader what to do after reading the email message — sign up for your webinar, download a report, etc. A study reveals that a single, clear CTA in your sales email can increase sales by 1617%.

Go back to Contents

Now that I’ve covered what email copywriting is, let’s go over some email copywriting tips you can start using today.

9 No-Nonsense Tips to Help You Excel at Email Copywriting

Here are nine practical tips that’ll help you ace your email copy:

1. Be Clear about Your Email Copy Goals

You can use emails to accomplish a variety of goals:

• Sell your product or service.
• Build brand awareness.
• Get more subscribers for your newsletter.
• Invite people to your webinar.
• Drum up interest for a new product launch.
• Introduce new industry best practices, and more.

However, there’s no one-size-fits-all email copy you can use to achieve these diverse goals.

For instance, if your goal is to nurture an inbound marketing lead, your email marketing copy should focus on slowly nurturing the sales lead and shouldn’t sound too salesy. But if your goal is outbound sales, your sales email copy should quickly build interest in your offerings.

My point?
Have a specific end goal in mind before you start email copywriting.

Once you do, craft your email copy in such a way that every word in your email drives the reader towards fulfilling your end goal — be it sales, newsletter sign-ups, and so on.

2. Know Your Audience — Their Niche, Pain Points, and Aspirations

In email copywriting, “who” you write to must inspire “what” you write.

This means that you’ll need a thorough understanding of your target audience to develop a strategy for effective email copywriting.

But how do you understand the target audience?
At the most basic level, you’ll need a clear picture of the recipients’:

• Industry or niche.
• Pain points.
• Goals or aspirations.

Once you’ve nailed that, create detailed buyer personas showcasing some specific qualities your ideal buyers share. Buyer personas offer a deeper understanding of your target audience and help you create relevant email content that’ll capture the recipients’ attention.

I’ve used the plural personas here because your business may serve multiple customer segments.

For example, let’s say you’re a marketer in a content marketing agency.

One of your buyer personas can describe a CEO at a fintech company in San Francisco earning $1 million annually. Another buyer persona might be a small eCommerce business owner from Austin with $40,000 in profits.

3. Evoke Interest with Crisp, Clear, and Candid Subject Lines

No matter how good an email you’ve crafted, it’s not going to accomplish anything if the recipient doesn’t even open your email in the first place.

And there’s a high chance that even your best email will go unnoticed because the recipient’s inbox is probably flooded with emails just like yours.

That’s why your email will need to stand out from the crowd.

How do you do that?
Simple! You should write subject lines that are:

• Short and sweet: since many recipients will likely read your email on a mobile device, keep the subject line length between 6-10 words. Otherwise, it could get cut off.
• Personalized: include the recipient’s name and any other relevant details in your subject line to make it look tailor-made.
• Clear: paint a clear picture of what your email is about in the subject line and avoid using bait-and-switch tactics that damage your credibility.
• Intriguing: use a hard-to-ignore email subject line to capture the reader’s attention and get them thinking about what’s inside your email.

Remember, the subject line is your first touchpoint with the audience.

It not only makes the first impression but also gives the prospect a preview of what to expect in the body of the email. Besides, your subject line sets the tone for the rest of your conversations with the recipient.

Wondering what an excellent email subject line looks like?

Here are a few examples you can use for inspiration:

• Learn how [client name] improved their email deliverability by [X]% in a month
• Struggling with managing investor relations, [prospect’s first name]?
• Here’s a blog post revealing my secret behind [digital marketing milestone]
• How I made [company name] $[X] profit in [Y] months
• [Prospect’s name], here’s my complete guide to SEO in content marketing

Take a look at 43 cold email subject lines that get your emails opened.

4. Keep Your Email Body Aligned and Relevant

Your prospect will form some expectations about the email body based on your subject line.

For example, let’s say your subject line talks about how you helped a client increase their revenue by $100,000 with a single email marketing campaign.

When the recipient opens your marketing email, they expect to discover the tactics and email marketing strategy you’ve used to accomplish that goal. In other words, your email body copy should align with the promise made in your subject line.

But aligning the email body copy with the subject line is only the first step.

You’ll also need to:

• Establish credibility: if you’re sending a cold email, establish at the get-go why you’re the right person to approach about a specific topic. Also, featuring customer success stories in your outreach email goes a long way in building trust.
• Add value: use your unique experiences and insights to enrich the prospect’s life. Share a great example from your personal life, a relevant case study, or a helpful blog post in your email body.
• Eliminate objections: your recipients won’t readily agree with everything you say, so proactively address any possible concerns or objections in your email body.
• Personalize your message: since generic messages look spammy and feel irrelevant, personalize your message based on the recipient’s interests to resonate with them.
• Segue into the CTA: your end goal is to make the recipient do something (for example, click a link to your landing page), so transition smoothly from the email body to your call to action.

Go back to Contents

5. Craft a Compelling Call-to-Action Your Recipients Can’t Resist

Your call to action can make or break your conversion rate.

If your CTA isn’t compelling enough, a potential customer will move on to the next thing after reading your email message. And all the effort you put into crafting a valuable email goes down the drain when that happens.

Here are a few pointers to help you create CTAs that can’t be ignored:

• Stick to a single CTA: many marketers add several different CTAs, but that can overwhelm your reader. Instead, use a single, clear CTA in your email copy.
• Use actionable language: a CTA should prompt action, so use a clear action word in your CTA. You can use an action word like “explore”, “access”, or “generate” based on your needs.
• Make the CTA personalized and specific: a specific and customized CTA like “Start your free trial today, [prospect’s first name]” speaks directly to the recipient and inspires action.

For example, here’s an email copy with a compelling CTA:

6. Ensure That Your Entire Email Copy Stays On-Brand

Every conversation you have with your audience is an opportunity to showcase your brand.

That’s why it’s crucial that your entire email copy — the subject line, email body, and CTA —  reflect your brand voice.

And this brand voice will vary across businesses and industries.

For example, if you’re a fun soft drinks brand, your brand voice can be edgy and witty. You can insert a few cheeky jokes or playful puns in your email newsletter, and your audience will love it! It’s exactly what they expect in your brand’s email content.

However, you can’t use the same tone when email copywriting for a law firm. You’d be expected to adopt a serious and professional tone in your email marketing campaign.

7. Create Personalizable, Ready-to-Use Email Copy Templates

Crafting a great email copy from scratch every time you need to send an email campaign is impractical.

A more efficient alternative is to create email templates you can quickly customize with personalization data.

This way, you can:

• Save time.
• Keep your email marketing copy on-brand.
• Deliver personalized experiences to your prospects.

To help you out, here’s a sample direct email template you can use as a reference:

Quick plug! At GMass, we’ve built our cold email platform so it automatically saves your past emails as templates which you can use in the future without any hassle.

8. Edit Your Email Copy for Accuracy and Readability

After you’re done writing the direct email copy, don’t send it out immediately.

Instead, take a break and come back later to do a thorough round of editing.

You should look for:

• Stray punctuation.
• Vague phrases or sentences.
• Confusing repetitions.
• Inconsistencies in the brand voice.

Essentially, ensure that your email content makes sense, has no errors, and reads well.

Otherwise, you risk confusing the recipient, leaving a poor impression, and failing to achieve your end goal with the email copy.

9. Use A/B Testing to Fine-Tune Your Email Copy

You may follow all the best practices — research your target audience, write clear copy that’s on-brand, and edit your emails to the last letter — and still end up with not-so-great results.

But that doesn’t mean you should give up.

Smart email marketers and copywriters know that email copywriting is at times guessing.
Some things you write just click, while others don’t.

Is there a way to predict if your email copy will work?
Sort of.

Just AB test different versions of your email copies till you find a version with the kind of results you’re aiming at.

What is A/B testing?
In A/B testing (or split testing), you split your audience into two groups and send them two different versions of an email copy to see which one performs better. You then choose the copy that brings the best results.

If you use any cold email AI-written content in your emails, it’s especially important to A/B test to see if they are effective or not.

Go back to Contents

Next, I’ll show you an easy-to-use tool you can use to scale up your email copywriting.

Level Up Your Email Copywriting Results in 2022 with GMass

GMass is a robust email marketing and marketing automation tool you can use to send personalized email campaigns at scale.

Its ease of use and advanced capabilities have made it the perfect email marketing solution for copywriters, marketers, and small business owners. It’s also popular among employees at social media powerhouses like LinkedIn and Twitter.

The best part?
GMass works entirely inside Gmail, so your email copywriter doesn’t have to get familiarized with a new UI.

With GMass, you can:

• Automatically personalize your sales or marketing email copies at scale, including the recipient names, subject lines, paragraphs, links, images, and attachments.
• Save your email copy as a template to reuse in a future email campaign.
• Perform A/B tests to efficiently identify which email copy works best with your email subscribers.
• Build an email list of your target audience directly from your Gmail search results.
• Use sentiment analysis to understand how your email subscribers feel about an email copy, and more.

To use this tool, download the GMass Chrome extension and sign up for a free trial with your Gmail or Google Workspace account.

Go back to Contents

Email Copywriting Guide: Final Thoughts

As an email copywriter, you’ll first need a clear goal in mind and an in-depth understanding of your target audience before writing the email.

Once that’s sorted, craft an intriguing subject line, an engaging body, and a compelling CTA for your email copy.

But don’t stop there.
Test your email copy with a small segment of your email list to see if it’s converting.

You can use an email marketing automation tool like GMass to easily perform your A/B tests, automatically personalize your emails at scale, save email copies as templates, and do so much more.

Download GMass’ Chrome extension for free and take your email game to the next level!

Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

twitter.com/PartTimeSnob